Betting on the Zebra Chapter 6

For Disclaimer and other details please see Chapter 1.

CHAPTER 6

Yawning widely Lenny yanked her jersey off and folding it quickly shoved it into her bag. Yes it had been a fairly uneventful night in the scheme of things. She had been put in a slightly less wacky match tonight. Not that she minded. She loved working in any match, no matter what it entailed. Well she supposed that wasn’t quite true, she realised as she remembered the match where she was supposed to have her clothes torn off. That was definitely were she drew the line. Not only didn’t she have enough confidence in herself or her body to run around flashing the goods like one of the divas but also she knew that her reputation would be in the toilet the moment that she did it. Then she snorted out a laugh. Her reputation? Who the hell did she think she was?

Shaking her head she let out a hiss of pain as she pulled her stitches with nothing but that simple action. Feeling pissed off because she couldn’t seem to remember not to do such stupid stuff she shrugged out of the rest of her clothes and headed for the showers. Yeah, the match hadn’t been quite as frenetic as the last one that she had worked but she had still worked up a sweat. Stepping under the warm spray she let out a sigh as she felt it soothe at her tight muscles. “God, I just hope that I get some sleep tonight.” She muttered to no one in particular and then closed her eyes.

Jesus, it was so quiet in here tonight. Of course that might have something to do with the fact that all of the other women were gone. She didn’t think that she had ever been in the women’s locker room alone now that she came to think about it. There were always at least a couple of others kicking around taking forever to get ready to leave. She smiled as she realised that she understood what men said about women taking far to long to get ready to go anywhere. Herself ... well she had never really had that kind of problem. It was always just a case of jumping in the shower, taking the minimal amount of time in there. Then she would quickly dry her body, get dressed and head on out to her car so she could get on the road to the next hotel. Hell most nights she wouldn’t even wait till her hair was anywhere near dry. She would just sit with it dripping down her neck as she travelled along. She theorised that it would stop her from ever falling asleep at the wheel. Of course she couldn’t let herself even think that it had anything to do with her wanting to keep a tight control on her timing and her timetable.

“I am not a control freak.” She muttered to herself as she grabbed her shampoo, squirted some onto her hair and began to rub. She remembered at the last minute not to be too vigorous.

-o0o-

Fifteen minutes later she was switching off the shower and wrapping a towel around her dripping wet body. Already in her mind she was on the road. Trying to work out where she was going to stop to get some food or how long she would have to go without making a stop for gas. Twisting the towel into something resembling a knot at the front of her body she tucked it in and grabbing her shampoo and soap headed out into the locker room once more. She had only taken a few steps in there before something began to seep into her brain. Yeah she might currently be mired deep in working out her travel plans onto the next city but she wasn’t that self absorbed that she didn’t notice the large shape that was sprawled out over one of the uncomfortable looking wooden benches almost right in front of her.

For a moment she thought that perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her and she blinked repeatedly. All that achieved was to make the shape swim into focus a little better. Damn, now she couldn’t even blame getting shampoo in her eyes on this ... whatever this was. Her hand flew to the front of her towel and held there even though it had been perfectly secure. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in here? She said not in the least bit surprised when her voice came out on more of a snarl than most regular, everyday speech would.

“Waiting for you.” Paul answered honestly as he didn’t even move a muscle from the bench. Hell he didn’t even lift his head to get a better look at her. He smirked slightly if she came a little closer he would definitely get a better look at her from this angle. In fact all it would take was for her to take a few steps nearer to him and for him to turn his head just a little and ... well he was pretty sure that she had no idea how short that towel was. “Wondered why you were taking so long to come out of here.” He shrugged. “Shoot me for being worried about you.” He finished in what he hoped was a winning way. But he couldn’t stop the slight smirk from crossing his face at the way that she clutched at the front of her towel. What did she think he was going to do? Rip the damn thing from around her?

She could feel her eyes widening so much that it felt like they were going to just blaze right out of her head. “NO! I think I’ll shoot you for being such a humungous fucking asshole!” She yelled practically at the top of her lungs. She would have laughed at the surprised expression on his face if this hadn’t given her such a fright. “I mean ... can’t you read?” She asked him and knew that her anger wasn’t abating one little bit. If anything it was growing. What the hell was it about these kinds of guys that made them think that they could do whatever the hell the wanted? “Just in case it had escaped your notice Levesque. The sign on the door says that this is the women’s locker room. If you take a look in your pant’s I’m pretty sure that I know what you’ll find.” She said sarcastically as she took her hand off the front of the towel so she could prop both hands on her hips. “Parked right there next to your brain is your dick! Here’s a little clue ... that means that you aren’t a woman.” She spat at him and then turned away to face her locker. “Now get the hell out!”

“Whoa there Lenny.” Paul said with a snort as he shoved himself into a sitting position and stared at her back. “I mean you don’t have to rip my head off.” He started in as non-threatening a way as possible. “Like I said I only came in here because I was worried about you.”

Knowing that she was shaking but not sure if it was caused by her anger or the fact that she had almost wet herself when she had walked out here to find a man sitting in the locker room as if he owned the damn place. “Yeah right Paul, try telling me something that I might actually believe!” She snapped as opening her locker she began to pull things out of there. “So you came into the women’s locker room and you saw that I wasn’t here. Why didn’t you just turn around and leave?” She asked and waited. She had everything that she needed to get herself dressed right there beside her but if he thought that she was calmly stripping off while he was here then he had another thing coming. God she would love nothing more to smack that smug, self-satisfied expression off his face.

“Well I heard the shower running and I...” His words were abruptly cut off when she spun around to face him once more.

Now she was pretty sure that her eyes were flashing fire. “Oh so you heard the shower running but you still didn’t leave?” She asked incredulously. “What were you expecting? I bet that you were disappointed when I actually came out of there in a towel.” As soon as she said ... or actually spat those words at him she wanted to just curl up in a hole and die. Who the hell did she think she was? And here she was practically saying that he came in here to ogle her. Fuck, she wasn’t that good looking, not by a long shot. But still she found it disturbing. Had he come in here to intimidate her?

“Hey!” Paul said trying to force a pissed off expression on his face. “What the hell do you take me for some kind of freak? Of course I didn’t want that to...” He let his words trail off and couldn’t stop himself from smiling widely. Yeah perhaps it wasn’t the smartest move that he could make but right about now he couldn’t stop himself from being honest. “Yeah well you got me.” He said honestly as he held up his hands in a caught gesture. “There was a part of me that was kind of hoping that you would come out of there either in nothing considering you thought that you were alone ... or perhaps in a smaller towel.”

As soon as he said that she shook her head disgustedly. “Well I’m so fucking sorry to disappoint you!” She snapped out. Shit she was so angry that she could feel tears pressing at the corners of her eyes. She knew that she wasn’t really upset ... she had a feeling that might come later when the hot fire of her anger had dissipated. “Now GET OUT!” She said turning and bending slightly she brought her face close to his so she could roar that right in his face.

-o0o-

Running along the hallway Kevin came to a skidding halt right in front of the women’s locker room. He had no idea what was going on. All he could hear was the very definite sound of female yelling. Whoever it was didn’t sound happy at all as they yelled at someone else to get out. He thought that he had seen all of the girls leaving all ready. “Must have been wrong.” He muttered to himself and reached out to open the door. Before he could even get his hand on the door handle someone beat him to it and the door burst open from the inside.

“Fucking hell!” Paul yelled as he flew out of the door. “All right, all right! I’m sorry!” He added as he bashed into the wall on the other side of the hall then turned to face her. “Jesus Lenny! It’s not as if I actually even saw anything!” He said and wondered if perhaps that was the stupidest thing that he could ever have said.

Grabbing the book out of her bag she hurled it out the door at him smiling widely when she saw it strike Paul in the arm. She was even happier when she realised that it was one of the hard sharp edges that had made contact with his flesh. “You shouldn’t have even had a chance to see anything!” She shouted at him. “Now get out of my sight!” She added loudly before her eyes narrowed when the alighted on Kevin standing there. She was so pissed of that she was damn sure that he wasn’t going to get away with this scot-free. She bet that Nash had put the stupid bastard up to this. “I should have known that you would be lurking in the shadows somewhere like some kind of...” Her words trailed off as she realised that she had no idea where this sentence was going. “Lurking ... thing.” She finished really lamely and felt the blush working its way up from her breasts to her face. Then she slammed the door so hard that she was surprised that the wall didn’t shake.

-o0o-

As soon as Kevin was sure that the shock had left his face he looked at his friend and started to laugh. In fact he was laughing so hard and trying to hide it that his shoulders were positively heaving. “You total dumbass!” He finally managed to gasp out between laughter and trying to catch his breath. He looked at the now closed door of the women’s locker room then back to his friend who was rubbing at his arm vigorously while looking at that same closed door. “I cannot believe that you ventured behind that door. Especially without an invitation. What the hell were you thinking?” He asked while shaking his head lightly. “Dumbass.” He repeated.

“I don’t really know what I was thinking.” Paul admitted with a frown. He had just been walking along the hallway when he had passed the women’s locker room and thought that he might just pop in to see if Lenny was still there. He had been pretty sure that she hadn’t left and he had been right. But he knew that what she had said, sorry screamed, was right. He shouldn’t have gone in there without her knowing and the second that he had heard the shower running he should have left. “I just wanted to see if she was ok.” He said and shrugged knowing that didn’t come anywhere near covering what he wanted to say at all.

Kevin started to walk along the hall with Paul falling into step beside him. He shot a last look at the locker room door and snickered slightly. “Well judging from the way she reacted ... I would say that she felt a hell of a lot more than ok. You bring out the abusive in her.” He said and shot a smug look at his friend. “Thanks by the way. I think that you just lost yourself a lot of points so I’ll look so much better compared to you. You’ve just made my winning the bet so much closer.”

“Yeah right, just keep dreaming Kev.” Paul muttered but he couldn’t deny that what his friend had just said made absolute sense. “I’m not going to be getting familiar with the silkies any time soon.”

But Kevin just shrugged. “Whatever you say Paul ... whatever you say.” He answered then shot his friend a slightly evil grin. “I would ask you what you saw but I heard you tell Lenny that you didn’t see that much.” He said and leaned a little closer to the other man with an arched brow.

“I saw enough.” Paul said with a smirk. “She has got great legs.” He said and then laughing he moved along the hallway a little quicker towards the parking lot.